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Tuesday, July 31, 2012

When I saw The Art
Annex’s Silly
Faces activity, I knew it was a future art project for my son. I pinned it until
the time was right. Since my diagnosis with breast cancer, I’ve spent a lot of
time thinking about its impact on my kids, particularly my almost-7-year-old
son.

The time was right to do this project. It could open up a
conversation about emotions - how he’s feeling and how I am, too. Plus, it was
just good old-fashioned fun. Before we got our art on, we read a wonderful book
about feelings. I’d recommend it for kids of all ages – toddler on up.

Now I gave my son some fun scrapbooking papers to choose
from for a background, a cut-out of a face, and some chipboard I’d cut from an
empty cereal box.

First, he drew hair on his head. I made one too, but used
brown paper to replicate my bob hairstyle.

Now, he glued the patterned paper onto the chipboard and
then glued the face in the center of it, using a glue stick.

I encourage you to visit Doris’ blog; she recommends using a
hand drill and large plastic needles with an eye. Since I don’t have either, we
made do without, but I’m sure these tools would have made the project easier.

Instead we used my husband’s cordless drill to poke holes in
the face template’s open circles (6 for each face: 2 for each eye and 2 for the
mouth).

When this was done, we clipped pieces of yarn and folded them
in half. Then to make it easier to thread the yarn through the holes, I used
some scotch tape at the ends (like the end of a shoestring).

Once through the
holes, I tied knots in the back, making sure to leave slack so the yarn
eyebrows and mouth could be manipulated into a variety of expressions.

Lastly, we glued on some big googly eyes. The next day when
the eyes were dry, we both played with our faces, going through a whole gamut
of feelings. It was bonding at its best.

NOTE: If you’re not
following Doris’ art blog, start now. There are SO many wonderful ideas on The Art Annex!!

A ballpoint pen, clipboard, and bottle of water and we were
off. My son made tally marks every time he saw one of the objects on the
recording sheet. When we got home, he skip counted the tallies and wrote the
number of each item down. Then on the back of the card, he put the items in
order from least to greatest.

Friday, July 20, 2012

I have seen so many amazing tee-shirts made with bleach on
Pinterest. I figured my son and I would give it a go. The final result is
out-of-this-world.

When my son got home from summer camp, we read Gail Gibbons’
book Galaxies, Galaxies! It shared
loads of information about the different shaped galaxies in space and explained
that the Milky Way is a spiral galaxy. This is SUCH a cool book. Seriously, how
does Gibbons crank out so many wonderful non-fiction books for kids?!?!

When we were done reading, I told my son it was time to make
a Milky Way galaxy tee shirt. “Are we painting it like my organs shirt?” he
asked. “Nope.” He was curious AND psyched.

I gave him a piece of freezer paper with a galaxy shape cut
out. (Download it here. Cut a piece of freezer paper to 8 ½ x 11 and feed it
through your printer.)

He carefully ironed the freezer paper stencil onto his navy
blue tee shirt. We used medium-high heat. NOTE:
Irons are hot, hot, hot. No child should use one EVER without adult
supervision. And even then, careful warning should be issued so children
understand the danger.

Afterwards, I put two cheap plastic placemats inside the
shirt between the front and back of the shirt.

Now it was time to use a bleach pen to “color” inside the
lines. This is pretty forgiving. Afterwards, carefully peel off the stencil.

When that was done, we used a small dollar-store squirt
bottle filled with liquid bleach. He squirted the bleach over our galaxy to
make stars. We let the bleach take effect and tossed the shirt in the laundry by itself.

I love the final effect. So does my son. Can’t you tell?

Personal note: Thanks
to everyone who offered prayers, virtual hugs, thoughts, and encouragement
earlier this week. As we continue to get test results back, I am increasingly
encouraged. The Grade 1 cancer appears to be confined in one breast, is
non-aggressive, slow-growing, and doesn’t appear to be in my lymph nodes. This
IS curable. And I look forward to joining the world’s population of amazing breast cancer survivors.

Monday, July 16, 2012

This is certainly not the post I’d hoped to be publishing,
but for many of you who have been visiting my blog since the very beginning,
it’s important for me to share.

Last week, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. At the age of
36, this was a big shock. Having undergone a whirlwind week of tests, fits of
crying, next to no sleep, and zero appetite, I’m relieved to report that the
prognosis is encouraging. All the test results indicate that my Stage 2 cancer
is curable. I hope to have a treatment plan determined by the week’s end.

It is my intention to still work with my oldest son when I
can. He’s going to need some sense of normalcy and I’m going to need a distraction
and to continue doing the things I love. The pace of our activities will no
doubt slow, and some weeks cease altogether. I will post when I can, but it
will be irregular, sporadic, and unpredictable.

I have LOVED being part of the blogging community and
consider many of you to be friends. During this time, I hope you’ll be patient.

Monday, July 9, 2012

Did you see? Stores are already putting school supplies
out!! To keep my son from forgetting some of the valuable information he
learned in first grade, I thought a recap of parts of speech was in order.

My inspiration was the amazing recycled whale I saw on Growing
Up Gardner. Once our empty gallon-sized plastic milk carton was rinsed out
and dry, I outlined the mouth on the bottom of the carton and cut it out using
a craft Exacto knife. Then I added the eyes and fins (oops, I forgot a blowhole!!)
with a permanent marker.

I took the cap off the milk carton and grabbed a stash of
plastic lids I’d been saving (21 in all). I divided the lids into two (almost
even) groups and, with a permanent black marker, wrote verbs on about half of the
lids and nouns on the rest.

Now I filled up the bathtub with a few inches of water and threw the lids in,
word-side up.

Before doing anything else we read Nouns and Verbs Have a Field Day, a playful book about what nouns
and verbs are and how much they need each other to make sentences. Super fun!

After reading, my two boys headed into the bathroom,
stripped off their socks, and my oldest waded in the tub (the youngest joined in the fun shortly thereafter). I explained: “The
whale is hungry. He only eats verbs for lunch. If he accidentally eats a noun,
he’ll spit it back out into the water in disgust.”

My son steered the whale through the water, carefully
scooping up lids. He held the whale upright to drain the excess water out of
the milk jug lid’s hole before putting the verbs he’d caught into a plastic
bin that I'd set out.

He made a few mistakes and really had to think when I told
him “baseball” was not a verb. “But I can do it, Mom!” To which I responded,
“You play baseball. And play is a
verb, not baseball. It’s a thing.” Now he understood and made the whale spit
the lid back out.This whale has been loads of fun. Not only have we practiced nouns and verbs, but it's a great bath toy (my toddler loves it too!).

Friday, July 6, 2012

I am still under the delusion that summer should be just as
carefree as it was when I was a kid. As a good friend pointed out to me, once
you have kids, summer is crazy busy. This activity was a great learning
opportunity that I threw together in 10 minutes – perfect for a busy day of summer
camp and baseball practice.

I grabbed a handful of items from our pantry with straight
sides. I measured the width, depth, and height (or length) of each and noted
the dimensions on a post-it note – one note for each object.

My son’s job was to measure the objects and label each with
the right post-it note. Before we got started, we did a little reading.

The first part of David Adler’s book Perimeter, Area, and Volume: A Monster Book of
Dimensions provided a great explanation of dimensions – how anything we can
hold or walk around has three, and pictures of things have just two. It also
illustrated what width, depth, and height (or length) are.

Once we’d reviewed this, my son was ready to put the ruler
to use.

After he’d stuck the
post-its onto all the items, he flipped them over to check if they were correct.
(I’d written the name of each object on the back of its dimensions.)

He thought he’d just measure one dimension of each object to
find the match, but confused width and depth and mistakenly matched several. A
quick review of the differences between width, depth, and height and my son
could see what he’d done wrong.

Wednesday, July 4, 2012

“Uh-oh,” I thought. My son didn’t have the context behind
why we celebrate Independence Day. I took some time to explain to him that on July 4,
1776, the U.S. adopted the Declaration of Independence, declaring its freedom
from Great Britain.

“Oooooohhhh,” he said. I could almost hear it click.

Now I had him write down how he would celebrate Independence
Day this year (apparently, we’re not just going to a parade and watching
fireworks, we’re playing Wii!). When he was done writing, we got out our set of watercolor paints.

He dabbed some drops on the paper and with a drinking straw,
blew air across the paint, pushing it out from the center droplet to make a fireworks shape.

Monday, July 2, 2012

My son’s baseball team is mid-way through the season and
with each practice, I see a love of the game growing with all the boys on the
team. It’s exciting to witness such enthusiasm, see their understanding of the
game grow, and skills improve.

When I conceptualized this activity, I asked my son which
sport (baseball, basketball, soccer, or football) he wanted to “play.”

“Baseball,” he said without hesitation. Of course.

I designed a page of four pinstripe baseball jerseys and
printed three of the pages onto cardstock. Then I trimmed two of the pages so
they were slightly narrower than the third (I wanted to be able to tape the
three pages together so the two outer pages of the game board could be folded in
on the middle page).

I laminated the pages, along with 12 cut-outs of baseballs.
(Download a PDF of the jerseys and baseballs here.)

With the baseballs cut out, I attached velco dots to the
back of each and the game board, beneath each jersey. I also taped the game
board together, using clear tape on the back to “hinge” the jersey pages,
putting the widest page in the middle.

Now, all that was left to do was write the players’ numbers
on the jerseys and corresponding math problems on the baseballs (e.g. player 12 would be matched with the ball marked 19-7).

It was up to
my son to solve the math problem and place the ball under the jersey with the
answer.

Three wrong answers (i.e. “strikes”) and the game was over.
Every three problems he answered correctly (i.e. “balls”), he was given a small
piece of candy (I used Smarties).

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